Death Cab For Cutie Transatlanticism Less ebullient than previous Death Cab efforts, singer Ben Gibbard and company have turned out a serene scrapbook full of piano accompaniments, simmering cymbals, buzzing guitars and enough quirky sound effects to keep you guessing with each page turn. Gibbard's sweet, echoey vocals are still the star in the mix, but the production skills of guitarist Chris Walla (who produced the latest from Hot Hot Heat and The Postal Service)...

Death Cab for Cutie played songs as if they were meditations, travelogues and hallucinations at the first of a two-night stand Monday at a sold-out Chicago Theatre. Supplementary pensiveness and subdued intimacy arrived via the Magik*Magik Orchestra, an ensemble that performed on the group's 2011 album, "Codes and Keys. " While at times resplendent and dynamic, the special pairing and career-spanning set also proved soporific and formal, preventing a majority of the uneven...

Death Cab for Cutie You Can Play These Songs With Chords This is not just a zealot collector's item. Sure, the fact that the album includes eight tracks that were released previously on cassette only, along with 10 "hard to find and previously unreleased" tracks, is certainly a fan's dream come true, but this release stands tall and strong on its own pigeon-toed, emo-rock legs. Singer and founding member Ben Gibbard's soft-spoken yet insistent vocals are...

On the way to making Death Cab for Cutie's forthcoming album, "Codes and Keys" (Atlantic), singer Ben Gibbard quit drinking, got married and ended up relocating to Los Angeles, a city he once despised. The dramatic changes were foreshadowed by Death Cab's bleak 2008 release, "Narrow Stairs. " "That record is kind of a fulcrum in my life," Gibbard says. "So much of the negativity in my life got funneled into it. I realized after the fact that I didn't want to go any darker.

Death Cab for Cutie guitarist and producer Chris Walla might have a tough time working on his long-awaited solo record at the moment. The master hard drive for the record recently was confiscated by "Homeland Security-type people" at the Canadian border, Walla told mtv.com. The site reports that the reasons for the confiscation were not abundantly clear as of Tuesday night. Walla had been working on the album for years, MTV reported, and had been awaiting delivery of the hardware from Canada.

"Telekinesis!" !!! 1/2 Artist name: Telekinesis Record label: Merge The buzz: Telekinesis is just one guy, Michael Benjamin Lerner, who not only sings all the tunes on "Telekinesis!" but also plays almost all the instruments. (No word on if he has telekinetic powers.) Thankfully, Lerner tours with a full band, the better to deliver his quick and catchy retro pop songs. The verdict: Unpretentious and sincere, "Telekinesis!" is the sort of fun, straightforward pop record that's easy to get excited...

Death Cab for Cutie fans may be waiting even longer for a long-promised album by guitarist Chris Walla. Walla, who was working on the "very political" record in Canada, told MTV that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security confiscated his master hard drive, which held all the song files, at the U.S. border. "And now I couldn't even venture a guess as to where it is, or what it's doing there," he told MTV. "Luckily, the [backup] tapes are Plan B, so ... it...

By Mikael Wood, TRIBUNE NEWSPAPERS: Special to the Los Angeles Times | April 20, 2008

Chris Walla of Death Cab for Cutie thinks that the volatile state of the download-ravaged record industry calls for a new way to measure commercial success. "It's like dog years now," the guitarist figures. "Every one record you sell actually stands for seven." Based in Seattle, where Walla and singer-guitarist Ben Gibbard formed the band as a home-recording project in 1997, Death Cab has sold nearly 1 million copies of 2005's "Plans," its debut for Atlantic after a string of...

"Telekinesis!" !!! 1/2 Artist name: Telekinesis Record label: Merge The buzz: Telekinesis is just one guy, Michael Benjamin Lerner, who not only sings all the tunes on "Telekinesis!" but also plays almost all the instruments. (No word on if he has telekinetic powers.) Thankfully, Lerner tours with a full band, the better to deliver his quick and catchy retro pop songs. The verdict: Unpretentious and sincere, "Telekinesis!" is the sort of fun, straightforward pop record that's easy to get excited...

To Death Cab for Cutie guitarist Chris Walla, fighting on the front line of music's "loudness wars" can feel like a lonely battle. Walla, who produces albums for indie rock groups in addition to his own, doesn't want to follow the trend of recording albums as loud as possible simply because other bands are doing so. The music loses something when pushed to extreme volumes, Walla said, sacrificing its nuances and emotion for attention-grabbing sound....

The audience looked like a casting call for the "The O.C.": some 2,200 tender innocents who had fallen in love with the same band as the teen soap opera's protagonist, Seth Cohen. Young Seth's heroes, Death Cab for Cutie, were on stage Wednesday at the sold-out Riviera, and the fans felt singer Ben Gibbard's pain. "Ohhhh-whoah, nooooo!" they moaned as one. "I need you so much closer." Death Cab's 75-minute concert had built to this moment, the title track of the Seattle quartet's...

Death Cab for Cutie guitarist and producer Chris Walla might have a tough time working on his long-awaited solo record at the moment. The master hard drive for the record recently was confiscated by "Homeland Security-type people" at the Canadian border, Walla told mtv.com. The site reports that the reasons for the confiscation were not abundantly clear as of Tuesday night. Walla had been working on the album for years, MTV reported, and had been awaiting delivery of the hardware from Canada.

Death Cab for Cutie played songs as if they were meditations, travelogues and hallucinations at the first of a two-night stand Monday at a sold-out Chicago Theatre. Supplementary pensiveness and subdued intimacy arrived via the Magik*Magik Orchestra, an ensemble that performed on the group's 2011 album, "Codes and Keys. " While at times resplendent and dynamic, the special pairing and career-spanning set also proved soporific and formal, preventing a majority of the uneven...

Death Cab for Cutie fans may be waiting even longer for a long-promised album by guitarist Chris Walla. Walla, who was working on the "very political" record in Canada, told MTV that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security confiscated his master hard drive, which held all the song files, at the U.S. border. "And now I couldn't even venture a guess as to where it is, or what it's doing there," he told MTV. "Luckily, the [backup] tapes are Plan B, so ... it...

By Mikael Wood, TRIBUNE NEWSPAPERS: Special to the Los Angeles Times | April 20, 2008

Chris Walla of Death Cab for Cutie thinks that the volatile state of the download-ravaged record industry calls for a new way to measure commercial success. "It's like dog years now," the guitarist figures. "Every one record you sell actually stands for seven." Based in Seattle, where Walla and singer-guitarist Ben Gibbard formed the band as a home-recording project in 1997, Death Cab has sold nearly 1 million copies of 2005's "Plans," its debut for Atlantic after a string of...

The audience looked like a casting call for the "The O.C.": some 2,200 tender innocents who had fallen in love with the same band as the teen soap opera's protagonist, Seth Cohen. Young Seth's heroes, Death Cab for Cutie, were on stage Wednesday at the sold-out Riviera, and the fans felt singer Ben Gibbard's pain. "Ohhhh-whoah, nooooo!" they moaned as one. "I need you so much closer." Death Cab's 75-minute concert had built to this moment, the title track of the Seattle quartet's...

On the way to making Death Cab for Cutie's forthcoming album, "Codes and Keys" (Atlantic), singer Ben Gibbard quit drinking, got married and ended up relocating to Los Angeles, a city he once despised. The dramatic changes were foreshadowed by Death Cab's bleak 2008 release, "Narrow Stairs. " "That record is kind of a fulcrum in my life," Gibbard says. "So much of the negativity in my life got funneled into it. I realized after the fact that I didn't want to go any darker.

Death Cab For Cutie Transatlanticism Less ebullient than previous Death Cab efforts, singer Ben Gibbard and company have turned out a serene scrapbook full of piano accompaniments, simmering cymbals, buzzing guitars and enough quirky sound effects to keep you guessing with each page turn. Gibbard's sweet, echoey vocals are still the star in the mix, but the production skills of guitarist Chris Walla (who produced the latest from Hot Hot Heat and The Postal Service)...

To Death Cab for Cutie guitarist Chris Walla, fighting on the front line of music's "loudness wars" can feel like a lonely battle. Walla, who produces albums for indie rock groups in addition to his own, doesn't want to follow the trend of recording albums as loud as possible simply because other bands are doing so. The music loses something when pushed to extreme volumes, Walla said, sacrificing its nuances and emotion for attention-grabbing sound....

Death Cab for Cutie You Can Play These Songs With Chords This is not just a zealot collector's item. Sure, the fact that the album includes eight tracks that were released previously on cassette only, along with 10 "hard to find and previously unreleased" tracks, is certainly a fan's dream come true, but this release stands tall and strong on its own pigeon-toed, emo-rock legs. Singer and founding member Ben Gibbard's soft-spoken yet insistent vocals are...